Boss Mick McCarthy said he was proud of his team after their 2-1 home victory over Sheffield Wednesday saw the Blues to ninth in the Championship on 68 points, four from the play-offs, their best finish in six seasons.
"It was an open game, both teams have got nothing riding on it except for the three points and a bit of pride,” McCarthy said.
"I should imagine the Sheffield Wednesday fans went away thinking their team put up a good show but we go away the winners. That’s what matters in the end, but they played well.
"It’s progress and I don’t really do ‘enough’ or ‘it’s ordinary’ and ‘it’s fine, it’s acceptable’. I do prefer better than that and I expect better than that.
"What I would say is that I’m immensely proud of the lads and the season they’ve had, they’ve been great. If you consider that we’ve not spent a coin on anybody coming in.
"It’s strange that because Marcus still has to put in £5 million or £6 million in or whatever it is, but we’ve not bought anybody.
"I’m just really pleased, really proud of them. I look at teams below us, Nottingham Forest, Bolton and Huddersfield and all of them that seem to have done it differently and I’m really proud of the players.
"I looked at the league and I thought barring Burnley, and they went out and bought Ashley Barnes for £750,000 or whatever it was at the last knockings, [no one above us has spent less] I think ours have been brilliant.
He was pleased to see Tommy Smith net his sixth goal of the season, rather better than his own highest total, with Smith's regular central defensive partner Christophe Berra scoring five and skipper Luke Chambers three.
"It was a good goal, they’re all good goals," he said. "I only scored 12 out of 500-odd league games, two was probably my best!
"The two of them [Smith and Berra] have been great. When we’ve got good deliveries in the three lads have all contributed. The area where we haven’t contributed enough is from midfield, to be honest with you.”
McCarthy gave Jack Marriott his second Town appearance from the bench late on and admits he considered giving him longer: "There was not a lot at stake then. I could have done something different with the subs but I wanted to win the game.
"You could see the size of them, if we’d put Jack on too earlier we might have got done from a freekick and I wanted to win. As much as I would have liked him on and I could have done something different, but he got on.”
He says the three-man backline was something he’d wanted to look at: "We were in on Thursday and I said ‘Let’s just have a look, we’ll try it’.
"I’ll never know whether it would have worked because we started and there wasn’t one of our players that could pass to anybody in a blue shirt, we were f-----g hopeless.
"If you can’t keep the ball, you can’t pass it, they kept attacking us. I’ll never know whether it worked.
"It wasn’t down to a system because we gave it away. I thought that if we weren’t playing well off that solid 4-4-1-1 at least we’re not going to give something away, so that’s why I went back to it.
"I tinkered with it but there was nothing at stake. Then at the end when we were winning, I wasn’t going to give that up easily.”
Sheffield Wednesday manager Stuart Gray felt his team ought to have made more of their opportunities: "My analyst tells me we’ve had 21 goal attempts.
"I think we’ve dominated possession, we’ve had good counter-attack opportunities. It just shows that if you don’t get it right in both boxes you end up losing a game of football.
"I’m disappointed that we’ve conceded two goals but pleased with the performance. I thought we deserved something out of the game. Unfortunately, people will see the scoreline tomorrow, 2-1 to Ipswich, but with 21 goal attempts we should be working the keeper a bit more or scoring more goals.”